CW50 - The Bands Edition - No. 10

10. REM

Points: 197
Nominations: 13
3rd Place: 0
2nd Place: 2
1st Place: 0

No-one knows what REM stands for. Honestly, what is an REM? Despite this, they made some killer music in their time. Formed in Athens, a small in Georgia, USA in 1980, they were pivotal in creating the alternative rock genre and made a moribund music scene interesting. Dale Brumby said that they produced the rare feat of being the biggest band when they were the best. While I'm not sure about that, there's no doubt they were very good.

In 1983, REM produced their first album Murmur, which was more soft than most alternative rock bands of the time. However, while it was not popular with mainstream audiences, it won massive critical acclaim, with the album winning Rolling Stone's Album of the Year. The next 2 albums, Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction followed the same formula. It wasn't until Life's Rich Pageant, seen as the opposite to the murky Fables.... when REM started to break into the big time. They started to move towards a more mainstream direction and out of their college rock roots. However, their true breakthrough wasn't until Document, a political-ish album, and one that saw them break through to mainstream radio, with hit songs like "It's The End of the World as we Know It" and "The One I Love" bringing them the same sort of commercial acclaim as their critical acclaim. It was also their last album with IRS, with Green and onwards being produced by Warner Bros. This saw their popularity enlarge even further, and become world superstars, with great albums such as Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People and Monster.

However, by the mid-1990's the band started to lose momentum. Up, a more experimental record, did not sell as well as other albums. While they still had some success, it wasn't anywhere near as big as it was and they started to go more flat without the drumming of Bill Berry. However, they had better albums towards the end of their shelf life, with Accelerate and Collapse Into Now. However, by the end of 2011, they eventually retired the band, and REM was no more. A grand journey through the times. As bands came and went, they kept recording music, impressively.

Murmur (1983)
Reckoning (1984)
Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)
Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)
Document (1987)
Green (1988)
Out Of Time (1991)
Automatic For The People (1992)
Monster (1994)
New Adventures In Hi-Fi (1996)
Up (1998)
Reveal (2001)
Around The Sun (2004)
Accelerate (2008)
Collapse Into Now (2011)

Also:

4 Live Albums, 10 Compilations, 1 Remix Album

Download these songs:
Radio Free Europe; Swan Swan H; It's The End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine); Orange Crush; Losing My Religion; Everybody Hurts; Man On The Moon; What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

Great band, stopped listening to them almost entirely the lat couple of years but gone back to them the last few months, forgot how much I loved them. Automatic still their best album to but really like Murmur and New Adventures in Hi-Fi is under appreciated in my opinion.

Anyway 18 on my list, some great tracks through the decades. Stand probably my fave.

And smalishah's avatar is the most classy one by far Jan certainly echoes the sentiments of CW

Yeah we don't crap in the first world; most of us would actually have no idea what that was emanating from Ajmal's backside. Why isn't it roses and rainbows like what happens here? PEWS's retort to Ganeshran on Daemon's picture depicting Ajmal's excreta